Screen Time not stopping YouTube or Spotify

This has been a problem on iPhones since the dawn of screen time. Somehow, someway, these apps (YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok and handful of others) do NOT turn off at screen time deadlines. There are countless posts on this over the last 5 years and Apple always responds with the canned response, “use the time limit feature” which is NOT what people are asking for. We want to allow our kids to use these apps until a time of day, not limit their use by minutes.

it seems that’s the whole point of screen time but these apps have found a way around those blocks (for obvious reasons, they need our kids addicted in order to make money) but when Apple provides a solution to address this, but denies that it’s broke for some apps and never tried to fix it, it’s beyond frustrating.

if you can’t block ALL APPS that run on your OS, don’t tout the feature.

They won’t admit that they know about this issue and keep deflecting and say it’s “user error”. It is NOT. They just can’t fix the problem and don’t want to admit it.

I absolutely agree with you. We have the same issue in our family. My son is burning his brain out with these Youtube videos.

I find it a major issue that Apple is not able to get this app under control and I think it is a major reputation loss for them.

It is NOT a user problem. I am an IT engineer, and I have used technology for 30 years. I could literally show you in person if you live next-door to me that this technology does not work for all apps. I have tried every combination possible using downtime, and it simply does not work for certain app. I’m not an idiot I’m not technology illiterate. I know what I’m talking about. It is an issue that Apple refuses to address.

Did you have a real answer to this? I have all apps blocked besides phone text and photos after 2 hours of use but everyday roboblox and TikTok are available without restriction even though the time has already been used.

Dude, you just explained how screen time configuration works.

That's notwhat the question was. Did you just assume we are doing something wrong?

However it was you doing something wrong with your assumption.

If you know the answer please explain why screen time can not limit Roblox and YouTube but all other games, app groups and apps.

Otherwise there is no need to answer something other than the question.

I appreciate detailed screenshots, but users are complaining of different use case. Screentime only counts when application is playing in foreground or when phone is being used. If you enable Apple Music, Spotify or any other music app and let it keep playing in background with device screen truned off then it does not count towards screen time limit. This is a flaw that users are complaining. Try using app when you have not reached limit, turn on music and let it keep playing it in background with screen turned off, you can keep playing it for the entire day without hitting your screentime limit.

Screenshot below shows I have limit set to 1 hour for all music apps, yet my kid is sitting in front of me and has listened to Spotify for past 3 hours with iphone screen turned off, and it has not counted towards the time limit.

Finally made it work

When you select

settings > family > family member > screen time >

there are 3 options (at least for me).

• downtime
• App limits
• always allowed

When I applied the downtime and App limits, my kid would always blow past those restrictions.

then I checked the “Always allowed” option. It has two sections. The ones that are always allowed is on top, and the ones that don’t have that privilege are in second half of the screen.

For some reason most default apps like calendar and clock were not in top half, but in the bottom half.

guess what? YouTube and discord were in top part.

for testing I allowed YouTube for 1 minute, then tapped the red - (minus) icon for YouTube and discord in the top part. they went down to 2nd part. And boom.. my kid immediately called me to say his YouTube was out.

did the same with discord. Works great.

checked downtime. That too works great now.

hope this helps other parents.

You should pay attention to two commonly overlooked aspects...

1. Configuring device restrictions for your child's device.
2. Setting up a screen time passcode on your own device for your child.

Set Screen Time Restrictions for your Child in your Family using Parental Control.

Please see the pic below which is self-explanatory.

Set Screen Time Passcode for your child's device through your device.

Please see the pic below which is self-explanatory.

This GIF below will depict how to set Screen Time Restrictions for your Child's Device

1. Add your Child as a Family Member
2. Then Start Screen Time on your Device.
3. Now watch the GIF below

Go to Settings and tap Screen Time. Tap Content & Privacy Restrictions and enter your Screen Time passcode. Tap Content Restrictions, then tap Web Content. Choose Unrestricted Access, Limit Adult Websites, or Allowed Websites Only.

Use parental controls on your child's iPhone, iPad, and iPod ...

Set up parental controls with Family Sharing on iPhone

1. Go to Settings > [your name] > Family Sharing > Screen Time.
2. Tap the name of a child in your family group, tap Turn On Screen Time, then follow the onscreen instructions.

Set up parental controls with Family Sharing on iPhone

I hope that Apple does do this deliberately so that kids have a stronger habit of using iPhones.

Same here! I have two girls, they have the same settings, and one of the girl’s YouTube is just continuously there in downtime!

Check your child’s calendar. My daughter set her phone calendar date a day behind which in turned allowed her to have unlimited time on all her apps. On my phone when I went to the day it showered she had zero activity but when I went to screen time on her phone it showers activity.

Ok i found a solution to this problem. First you have to accept that some apps are not controllable this way. They are somehow cheating this system. The solution is to put a restriction to all apps from the "App Limits". There is a selection called "All Apps & Categories" This selection will also cover the apps you can not control like youtube or spotify or roblox etc. I'm giving a 1 hour restriction to all apps, with "Block at End of Limit"

I also have Downtime for everyday set to 21:00~16:00 with "Block at Downtime" This way all games fun stuff etc will stop working at 9pm and not be available until 4pm next day (after school)

Then, from the "Always allowed" section allow all the apps you want. The apps in this allow list will override "App Limit" restriction as well as the "Downtime" restriction. Add school stuff and productivity etc to this list.

So school and other essential stuff always works. Your kid will have 1hour to play between 4pm and 9 pm. If they want more time they will ask. Maybe they deserve it, so you might give extra time when they ask. But by default they have 1 hour.

This works wery well for us. You have to be firm. Good luck :-)

I am having same issue and it is definitely not simply a "user error" but I have some insights to share.

All permissions have been setup correctly. I have downtime scheduled, I have 1 minute time limit for all entertainment which includes YouTube. Only essential apps are in the Always Allowed list, so no YouTube or Spotify on there, yet my daughter can watch 2 hours and 40 minutes of YouTube today. It is really frustrating but I have also discovered a few things she has been doing to go around the many limits.

One method to play apple music after downtime is she uses the clock app to setup new alarms and in the alarm app you can use a song as the alarm sound. She then chooses her playlist of songs she wants and as it starts to play, she turns the screen off so the music keeps playing in apple music in the background. Then on the lock screen there comes the apple music mini player so she can skip to the next song and keep going for hours after downtime. My solution here is to block the clock app after downtime as well, so remove it from always allowed. I will wait to see if this is truly working and make an update here.

Also note, they can watch music videos in Apple music but you can also block this under the content restrictions. Its fine for me to listen to the music but spending hours watching music videos is nonsense. There are also music videos in Spotify but also strange series they can watch. I’m considering getting rid of spotify all together because I have not found settings to block these. Also, sometimes I notice youtube time being counted along with Spotify, maybe it has to do with the videos in spotify but I'm not sure yet.

For Youtube, one method is to send links to friends in iMessage. Here they can watch youtube videos directly in iMessage without using the youtube app, so no limit is ever reached. This one is solved by blocking youtube.com website. So the Youtube app still works but they can't access youtube directly from the browser. Also, never install or allow Google Chrome, it seems to also ignores the blocked sites and limits. Safari is better here of course.

The next one is she either force restarts the device or lets the battery die so it goes off. Then when she plugs it onto the charger and the device starts up again....somehow all the limits are gone until I go into screen time settings on my phone and I guess the configuration gets sent back to her device. This one is done on her iPad, not the iPhone. I have not found a way around this yet.

I'm a software engineer and this baffles me. So these bugs are obviously unique and they are also learning these from friends who have figured things out.

We can all hope our children do the right things but sadly the addiction is too strong. In the end we are responsible for them so the consequence has to be to remove the apps. If they are willingly finding ways around agreed rules then they lose these privileges. Of course I wish Apple would just fix these bugs but there are always loopholes to everything and since there is no fix in sight, I will remove the apps completely. I expect tears and random burst of anger but this is what it has come to for us.

I hope this helps another parent, particular the access to sites through the messenger. That one really irritated me because she could access Instagram and other site I had blocked.

Have you gotten a fix for this?